Fantasy Baseball Today - Top-150 Dynasty Rankings (1/5 Fantasy Baseball Podcast)

Episode Date: January 5, 2021

Scott White and Chris Towers are reunited! The guys take a closer look at Scott's Top-150 dynasty rankings, which were recently released on cbssports.com. Who's moved up since last season? Where do the top prospects fit in? Subscribe to our YouTube channel: youtube.com/FantasyBaseballToday 'Fantasy Baseball Today' is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, Castbox and wherever else you listen to podcasts.  Follow our FBT team on Twitter: @FBTPod, @AdamAizer, @CTowersCBS, @CBSScottWhite, @Roto_Frank Join our Facebook group at https://www.facebook.com/groups/fantasybaseballtoday For more fantasy baseball coverage from CBS Sports, visit https://www.cbssports.com/fantasy/baseball/ To hear more from the CBS Sports Podcast Network, visit https://www.cbssports.com/podcasts/ To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to the Fantasy Baseball Today podcast from CBS Sports. I drive, center field, at the wall, grand slam. This is magnificent. Got a fantasy question? Email Fantasy Baseball at CBSI.com. Get ready to win your league. Well, fantasy becomes reality. Now here's Frank, Scott, Chris, and Adam.

Fantasy baseball today coming at you for a second straight day as we ramp up. for the start of the 2021 season. Hopefully it'll start on time. Can't say that for sure just yet, but hopefully, fingers crossed. I'm Scott White, first of all, if you don't know me already. And I'm joined today by somebody

you should also know pretty well, Chris Towers, back in the fantasy baseball mix here. How's it going, Chris? I guess if you listened in the last week, but not in the several months, beforehand, then you don't know who I am. I'm Chris Dowers, fantasy analyst for CBSSports.com.

And yeah, I'm back in the baseball mindset, you know? Yeah. It's good. Football stuff is over and done. Well, I still have to write a football newsletter tonight. But, you know,

still doing both. Got my hands in both cookie jars. It's never really over, is it? No. But, you know, I'm working on rankings for the 2021 season.

Those are going to be on CBSports. com eventually. So I'm excited. You know, finally, finally don't get to be the guy who just tells everyone else their rankings are wrong, which is a lot more fun of a position to be in, let me tell you. You hate doing rankings,

I think more than anybody hates doing rankings. I hate the process of, like, the minutia of it. The like, oh, is this guy the number 12 starting pitcher or is he number four? And it's just like, my brain doesn't work all that well with it. You know, my, I don't, I don't do like the minor differences, you know, I, because, you know, it's a range of outcome. Yeah, it can be kind of a paralysis by analysis. Yeah.

Exercise, which, you know, kind of impacted the way I did my dynasty rankings. We're going to get into those a little today because we're actually, we're talking about dynasty leagues. yesterday I had another Chris, Chris Welsh, or just the Welsh. I had him on. We talked a lot about prospects. Really, we covered a lot of ground with that podcast if you didn't listen to it. We went a little long, but we covered a lot of ground.

I actually wanted to talk to him about the Mandalorian. We didn't even get around to it. I might bring that up here with Chris Towers, who's much more of a Star Wars nerd than either the Welsh or me. I got this for Christmas. I love it. you go. I assume that's baby Yoda slash grogoo. That is

that is grogou slash the child. Yeah, the child. Canonically has never been referred to as baby Yoda. Slash the kid. Yeah, see what I mean? Star Wars nerd. He's dropping canonically. Did I say that right? Canonical. I got my girl Asoka. Okay. These are

these are one of those pop funk figures for the punk punk pop. You got it Go pop toys. Yeah. For the people who aren't watching on YouTube, you should be. What's that URL, Chris? YouTube.com slash fantasy baseball today, I believe.

Okay. All right. All right. But enough of that. Maybe we won't even get to the names of Lauren. I don't know. We got a lot of dynasty talk here to do. I'm going to start here with the email of the day.

It's from Anthony Weigle. And it says, I am doing my first 15 team league, and it's a partial dynasty startup. Can you provide just a quick strategy overview? of how to draft. Well, that's a very broad question. Anthony Wiggle has some smaller questions within this email that we'll get to them. We'll get to them a little later interspersed throughout the show. But yeah, Dynasty League. That's the subject for today. And we're going to kind of frame this discussion around my top 150 dynasty rankings, which were released just before I took a vacation, a little Christmas break. Top 150. And I kind of do my

dynasty rankings differently to kind of prevent that paralysis by analysis phenomenon. I don't just rank players one through 150. I have a scoring system where I give them a present value grade, a future value grade, and a confidence grade, which is kind of how likely I think they are to meet their present and future value. And I add up those three scores. And, you know, obviously there are a lot of ties. to break once I add up their three scores, but that at least gets me started. It at least

kind of creates this tiering system. And I think it works well. I think if nothing else, it gives people more to get mad about, which is always good when you're posting content. Yeah. Yeah. So it goes a little beyond just ranking them. But yeah, we're going to go through that a little here. So one important thing to remember is that like there's no way. This is a one size fits all list, right? I have one set of dynasty rankings. Dynasty leagues, of course, are not one size fits all. They vary greatly depending on your rules. The value of prospects varies greatly, depending on your rules, how many keepers, how deep the league is, whether or not minor leaguers are kept at a different value than major leaguers. This all makes a major difference.

So that's important to keep in mind. But you kind of just have to adjust them knowing your own league settings. The way these came out with that rating system I have, a 31-year-old, like Freddie Freeman, who, you know, still has a pretty good amount of his career left, we think, you know, not a very, first base, not a demanding position defensively, 31 years old. He checks in at 19th, so he drops, you know, maybe about 10 spots from a redraft league, maybe a little less than that. Then you got like a 34-year-old, you Darvish, not much of a future at all. He comes in 49. then you got a 37-year-old like Zach Granky, still not much of a future, but even less confidence in the median and present because of some regression trends we've seen from him.

He checks in at 129. So bigger drops from the really old guys like that. Four players got fives across the board for a total of 15 points. One of them is a pitcher. Shane Bieber. He's only 26 years old and obviously was a monster last year. He's one of four players. got to put him number one just on principle.

A pitcher number one in the dynasty league doesn't make sense. So that really comes down to three players. You can make a case to go number one in these dynasty rankings. The order I went with is Ronald de Cunia, Juan Soto, Fernando Tatis. Chris, talk because I'm done talking. Pretty hard to argue with it. I think there's an interesting philosophical question to ask when you look at someone like Shane Bieber, I think, is the key example.

He's 26 years old. 26. If he was a position player, 26 is you still got, you would think five levels, five years of at least, you know, you should expect really good production from it. Pitching, it's kind of a little different. You know, you have some guys who tend to hit a wall in their late 20s, some guys who like Jacob de Grom just keep getting better into their mid 30s. Justin Berland or Max Scherzer would also fall into that, you know, to a certain point. I think we finally saw that point within the last couple of years for both of those guys. But, you know, you know, know, when I'm looking at Shane Bieber and you initially said, well, you got five across the board. And I'm thinking, well, 26 for a pitcher isn't really the same thing as 26 for a position player. You know, you wouldn't expect the high level perform. But then I thought, like, the way I look at Dynasty leagues and the way I approach them and you're, I think, a little different than me. But for me, it's like the first three years are really like 95% of what I care about. because so much can happen three years from now.

Three years ago, we had never heard the name Shane Beaver. Maybe you had because you get really deep into the prospects before the fantasy baseball world as a whole, going into the 2018 season. Shane Beaver wasn't really someone people were talking about, someone that people were really interested in. It was a fringe low 90s throwing prospect who had great control

and didn't have like super elite minor league. numbers, a lot can change in three years is what I'm saying. And so when you look at Shane Bieber 26, 27, 28 age seasons, yeah, he's probably going to be pretty good. I mean, you know, there's only so much that you can project for a pitcher, but in as much as you can, you know, I think those, the next three years. And so, you know, I think when you start looking at like, well, Mookie Betts, you know, he's a little bit older, but he's 28, Mike Trout, 29. Like, maybe you'll see those guys regress, but I think the line between those two Mike Trout, Mookie Bats, and Acuna Soto and Tatis is pretty slim. And obviously, you know, there's, it's five and

six versus one, two, three. So it's a pretty slim margin either. Right, right. I mean, the thing about Acuna Soto, Tatis, the oldest of them is Acuna, who's 23. And this is, uh, these ages are going by July 1st next year. He will, I don't know if he's already turned 23. I don't know exactly where his birthday falls, but, you know, I'm giving some wiggle room with a. They're very young is the point. They're very young. They're already studly. I could see going a Kunia one, Tatis two, and strictly a five-by-five context.

I would probably put Soto one if it was strictly a points league context. As it is, I go Acuna Soto, Tatis, because Tatis is a little less proven than the other two. But I think that's the obvious top three. You bring up a good point there with Bieber and pitchers in general. in a dynasty league. So I'm going to jump ahead to a Twitter question we have here from CJ Baseball. That's what he goes by. When looking at a dynasty league,

do you focus more on prospect pitchers, hitters, or is it just available? Now, he's just best available. He's talking about prospects specifically here. But the pitcher versus hitter thing for a dynasty league, I think it's a good conversation. point, particularly with what's going on in fantasy baseball right now. I mean, I've, I feel like I've kind of been leading the push for drafting high-end pitchers earlier,

but those are proven high-end guys already. I think it's really hard to win without them. I think they're the most impactful players. By nature of being a prospect, there is no proven high-end pitcher prospect. So I, in dynasty leagues, I like to I think the only way you can feel confident you're going to corner a high-in starting pitcher among prospects is if you just have a ton of pitching prospects and even then you're still going to get a lot of misses. So I would rather build my prospect base with position players

and then trade for the already proven pitchers and assemble a good pitching staff that way. That's how I've been going about it in most of my dynasty leagues. I can't remember. Theo Epstein Cubs model was, was you build the pitching staff once you have everything else. You know, you go get John Lester. You go get you Darvish.

And, you know, I'm looking back at 2018 baseball perspective's top prospects. This isn't for fantasy. This is just regular. But when you look at, let's say, the top seven or so hitting prospects, Ronald Cunia, Victor Robles, Glabert Torres, Vlad Guerrera, Francisco Mejia, Elo Jimenez, Nick Senzel. That's the top seven. Well, you got, Mahia's just a miss so far.

and I think Senzel counts as a miss as well. Vlad somewhat close to that, but he's still been worth it. Yeah, still very young. The rest of those guys have pretty much been must-start guys. So four out of seven. You look at the top starting pitching prospect from this list. Alex Reyes, Forrest Whitley, Brent Honeywell, Sixtho Sanchez, Mitch Keller, Michael Copac, and Walker Bueller.

So, Bueller's awesome. and Six of Sanchez had like six really, really good starts. That's it. And so I think that kind of highlights that there's the volatility of pitching just in general. And then there's the volatility of pitching prospects because you're dealing with injury rates for younger pitchers, which are all to be higher. You're dealing with guys who haven't shown that they can handle the 150 inning, 180 inning threshold, which ironically, Walker Bueller among this group. probably had been proven that the least at 2018, because I think he had just been drafted in 2017

and was coming off Tommy John surgery, right? I think he did start out his professional career. Yeah, recovering from Tommy John surgery. So that's, and then you, of course, have the old acronym, tin stab. There's no such thing as a pitching prospect, which was going by somebody of baseball prospectus, right? I think so.

Yeah. So that kind of plays into that. But, yeah, I mean, one of my dynasty type, leagues. I had over a span of a few years, I had accumulated like McKenzie Gore, okay, Forrest Whitley,

Brent Honeywell, Brendan McKay, Tristan McKinsey. Like I had this slew of like great pitching prospects. And I'm pretty sure none of them are going to end up coming through for that team. I've moved on from Honeywell,

Whitley, and McKay just because they all seem very risky at this point, McKay coming off torn Labroman a shoulder. And then we, of course, know what's going on with Whitley and Honeywells just had injury upon injury. I gave up on Tristan McKinsey back when he was having armed troubles. It ended up being kind of premature, but that kind of, that ends up happening too. You make a wrong assessment about a guy who hits a kind of a speed bump along the way.

I even ended up moving on for McKinsey Gore just because it's like the way things played out for those others. I don't want him to bottom out too. I mean, you know, I think to a certain extent, it's true for all prospects, but especially for pitching prospects, their time is never, their value might never be higher than right before they got called up or the day they get called up. And so, you know, it's, I think it's a question of philosophy, but when you're talking specifically about dynasty, I do agree with you. you probably want to build around hitting at least a little more. You want your big swings to be a hitter because they're more likely to give you not just the immediate impact. Although I think they're, you know, you could maybe make a case that pitching prospects are more likely to hit the ground running in the majors and make an impact.

Maybe that's become I think less true in recent history. But yeah. Yeah. The three years, the next five years, hitters are a more. much safer bet. And, you know, I would also point out, uh, prospect catchers are. Yeah. Like the pitchers of hitters. Right. They, their value gets suppressed in, and dynasty leagues, you know, relative to mainstream prospect rankings. That happens all the time. It does. Um, you know, so just kind of talking prospects in

general where they wound up in my top 150 for dynasty leagues here. The highest ranked of all prospects is no surprise Wander Franco. He checks in at 26. for me, which would be like a third rounder in a 12-team league. He's almost certainly going earlier than that. I don't think I've ever done a dynasty startup mock where he went later than round two. I think he won a five and one that we did last year. Quite possibly. But I don't think that means I have him wrong, him at 26.

What do you think? No, I mean, if he played for a different organization, I think there, you know, his chances of making his, major league debut early would be higher. But the raise tend to be real frustratingly slow with their top prospects. A lot of them see full seasons in the high miners. A lot of them, you know, they're going to try to like buy out some arbitration seasons or like it's all about cost effectiveness and cost certainty and making sure that by that

player is truly ready by the time he gets called up. And so in another organization, I would think we probably would have seen Wander Franco last season, even though he was only 19. With the raise, presumably we see him this year. I don't think it's a guarantee. Yeah, I want to say it's a guarantee. I think it's a strong possibility. It's less about the fact Wander Franco plays for the Rays for me than just my philosophy toward prospects in general and a dynasty league. I'm never going to be the guy who drafts Wander Franco.

I'm never going to be the guy who goes the extra round for the extra big deal because I don't think, I mean, Wander Franco seems pretty safe. I'll grant that. But I don't think any prospect you can really predict with that much precision what he's going to be at the major league level. So I want lots of good prospects, but there are lots of good prospects out there. And I don't care so much about getting my favorites necessarily. I want the guy who slides, which I feel like Alex Kierloff is a guy who slides a lot in these industry drafts.

Alec Bohm, last year I felt like slid a lot. And of course, now he seems like a pretty big deal. I'll just take whoever's left over from the many, many prospects that are out there. And, you know, there's more than enough to go around. So I'm just happy doing that. That's not where I want to make my big investment, generally speaking. I mean, I think there's an interesting one. You have him, Wander Franco, just behind Boba Chet,

and just ahead of Zander Bogart's, two spots ahead of Zander Bogartz. Now, Boba Shat, he's only played 79 games in the majors. They've been really good games. Zander Bogartz has been, you know, one of the best players in fantasy baseball, for a half decade, probably longer than that because he was early on, he was really good

in like different ways than he has been the last few years. I think that's a really interesting one. You know, 26 for Wanderfranco or 28 for Zander Bogart. Zander Bogartz is 28 years old.

But I mean, you tell me, you ask me who's going to be better over the next three years. I think I'd have to go with Zander Bogartz. And I would say that for the next two,

for sure. Three, it gets kind of iffy. But that's, you know, that's putting a lot on Wander Franco, which is the point. That's, he might be the only prospect that I'm willing to put that much on, and that's why he does go as high as he does. But I'd still rather be the guy taking him in round three than the guy taking him in round two, which is

probably means I'm going to miss him. Yeah. Second highest prospect I have here in these, in this dynasty top 150 is McKenzie Gore, a pitcher, at 46. Now, I have him just ahead of Tyler Glass now, who is 27 years old.

I have two spots ahead of Corbyn Burns, who is 26 years old, 26 years old, older than people might realize, considering he just broke out in 2020. So they're not especially young and they're still kind of finding their footing. I mean, Tyler Glass now, the past two years combined has like 110 innings combined the last two years. We still don't really know how he's going to hold up. If he can hold up as a starter. So obviously both of them are more proven than Gore, but I don't think they're truly established yet.

I don't know. I'm willing to give the slight edge to Gore there, but I'm going to guess you disagree. I think in those cases, you know, as good as Corbyn Burns was last season and, you know, he was on a per running basis, one of the best pitchers in fantasy. he still only through 10 and 2 thirds innings more last season in his breakout than he did in 2019 when he had an 882 ER. Now, yes, we liked him a lot more than that 8082 ERA suggested. I mean, you were leading the charge there. He was one of my favorite sleepers last season. He ended up being really good.

The stuff is awesome. But we're still dealing with a really, really small sample size. He's thrown 146 and two thirds innings in the majors combined. And he's 26 years old. he's been in for three years. And really not a lot of that has been as a starter. Only 13 starts. And so I think I would take Corbyn Burns over McKenzie Gore

just because, you know, the fact that they passed over McKenzie Gore, you know, what, three different times last season with other prospects when they needed pitchers. Just give me a little bit of pause. It makes me wonder, was there something going on at camp that we weren't able to see? And this kind of brings me to one of the questions I wanted to that. ask you, which ties into this, was, you know, how are you valuing prospects differently this season than last? Because for the most part, you know, a couple of guys got called up. You know, you look at what, Patino, the guy who he got traded to.

Tampa Bay. Yeah. And the Blake Snell deal. He did pitch in the majors, but it was, what, 11 innings, nine innings, something like that? It wasn't much. It was in relief. He looked horrible, a lot of walks. Very young. Tell us very much about him. Yeah. Mackenzie Gore, we, you know, he, maybe you watched a live stream of the San Diego Padres training camp. I don't know, uh, you know, if they were offering that. I watched a couple for the Marlins. But, you know, for the most part, we didn't get to see these guys. And I'm not sure how much the scout, uh, you know, scout writers got to see of them. I presume they have, you know, sources who can tell them stuff. But it feels like we have less we, we should have less information and we definitely, we have less information about prospects this year than we ever. do. How does that change how you value them in a different year? Would Wander Franco be higher? Would he be higher? Uh, no. No. I mean, there, there isn't there just by virtue of they're not being minor league games there, there, there isn't the opportunity for other prospects to close in on his number one status and really narrow the gap there in a way. Oh, number one overall, number one prospect you're saying. Yeah, but would he, would he be a, would he be a, would he be?

higher in your dynasty rankings in a different seat? I don't think it really changes that. I have, I did have concerns going into this prospect ranking process that I've spent a lot of the offseason doing that, you know, without new data for anyone, or my rankies just going to be exactly the same as they were last year. And I'm sure they're closer than they normally would be. But it's been going through the process that's been less of a concern than I thought it would be you do get nuggets.

Baseball America has been especially good about observations from the alternate training site. I don't know who was making those observations, but somebody was granted access and was making them. And there are some interesting nuggets there that have influenced my opinion on, you know, a decent number of players. And sometimes I just, sometimes just the passage of time and the, uh, the increase in age for different prospects, you know, now suddenly guys who are 24 and 25 and still in the minors just by virtue of being that old in the minors start to look less interesting because like have they progressed enough? So, so there's been a little bit of shuffling around there in my prospect rankings because of that. There's been more than I thought there would be.

Less than the typical year, certainly, but more than I thought there'd be. Yeah, it just, to me, it just adds uncertainty. And I think that goes into what, what we're kind of talking about with prospects when you're looking at them and comparing them, you know, not just to one another when you're doing your prospect rankings. If there's, if everyone is uncertain, if everyone has this added uncertainty, then it doesn't really change anyone that much or it changes you on the margin. But when we've got, you know, we saw Shane Bieber breakout or, you know, we saw Corbyn's breakout. And so when you're talking about Corbyn Burns versus McKenzie Gore, that is where I think a guy who did play or at least who we watched play.

I definitely feel more secure drafting them at the very least, both in redraft and a dynasty league. I think that's probably the way I would phrase it. Some other prospects here. So remember I had McKinsey Gore at 46. Next up among prospects, Jared Kelnick, Andrew Vaughn, Spencer Torkelson, their 50, 51, and 52, respectively.

Then comes the catcher, Adley Rushman at 70, Julio Rodriguez, young Mariners outfielder at 78. that's about as high as I'm able to put any of those guys. So again, it's Kelnick at 50 and then what, five prospects total ending with Julio Rodriguez at 78. That's about as high as I'm able to rank them with the tabulation I do because their present value is so low.

Chances are they'll all actually get drafted earlier than that. But again, I'm okay with it because I think it kind of gets to what I was saying earlier about I'll take I'll take the value prospects I'll take the best of what's left there's plenty out there I think in general particularly the trendy the most buzzed about prospects they get drafted too early in general in dynasty leagues and I'm happy to take the proven 20 something over them you know because you still got a future with them you just have a present as well And proven. They're proven. Yeah. And someone like Julio Rodriguez, I think is especially interesting because, you know, he played 84 games in 2019 between High A and A ball. He was awesome. 929 OPS, 326 average, you know, just an incredibly toolsy player. You know, people really love the skill set, the physicality.

but we've never seen him play above in the high minors. And this brings me to another question, then we'll move on from the prospect part. But what do you expect from someone like Julio Rodriguez in 2021? Where do you think he'll start? He's played 17 games above regular Class A ball. Yeah, he got to high Class A at the end of 2019 and dominated there for what it's worth.

I suspect he'll start a AA, but it may be high class A again. The feeling around Julio Rodriguez is that he's going to move fast. There's kind of that Juan Soto vibe about how quickly he's going to move. Very physically mature. Yeah, and like he's an awesome prospect. I'd be happy to take him at 78, you know, in the Dynasty League. I'm just not going to be able to get him.

That's just not going to work out. And that being said, it gets to what I was saying earlier about, you know, this can't, this is a one-size, fits all list for what can't be a one-size fits-all exercise. It depends on the way your league is actually set up. Anthony Wiggle, who again referring to his email, the way his dynasty league is set up here, 15 teams, the keepers are seven MLB players, so just seven, 10 minor leaguers, and they lose minor league status when they graduate from, when they lose their rookie eligibility. So to crack your list, of seven MLB keepers,

you have to feel really confident once they've exhausted their rookie eligibility, that they're going to be the real deal. And I play in a league like that. It's actually that same league I was mentioning to you where I traded away all those pitchers that were panning out because I was starting to feel not so confident that they were going to crack

my small group of major league keepers even when they did get the call. In that kind of dynasty-type format, there's enough turnover happening with so many MLB players not being kept that like you don't you don't really need to have that farm system sustaining your major league roster you know like that's not

that's not the dynasty format where you really go heavily after the prospects they're just kind of bonuses if they pan out I feel like yeah and you know I think one suggestion I would add would just be you know, it also depends on how you want to build your team. If you want to be the guy who's building for five years, you know, a sustainable five year plan, then, you know, maybe you bump up the younger guys.

Maybe you just copy and paste this ranking and add one to the future value for everyone. Or conversely, if you want to be the guy who competes for the next three years and then figure it out, or has a really strong team in year one and then starts trading pieces off, maybe you, you know, boost the present value for everyone or something. something like that. So, you know, that's the thing about dynasty is it's, it's not just your league type. It's how you want to build your team that plays into it as well.

Yeah. Yeah, one other question here from Anthony Weagle. How many of the prospects he drafts should be long term versus short term, the guys who are going to help more immediately? I'm probably unusual among fantasy analysts that I think I value proximity more. than most. I want a constant cycle of minor leaguers because they're going to sink or swim, right? You want to give more a chance to swim than to put all your eggs on a guy. You're going to wait three or four years to find out if he's going to develop into something worthwhile, you know?

So I'm going to miss out on a lot of exciting international signies doing it that way, but I'm giving myself more chance to hit big just because I'm able to move on from a guy quicker and not waste so many years waiting for him to develop. I gather you're kind of the same way too, though. Yeah, and it's less about that and, you know, or at least as much about that as it is about certainty. The guys who, you know, if you look at it, there's a, there's a theory. about why we've never encountered intelligent life in the universe. Stay with. Yeah.

Okay, we might get into the Mandalorian. This might be a good tie-in. It's what's it called? It's like the great filter, I think, is what it's called. It posits that at various stages through the evolution of an organism or a planet or a organism. organisms life there come certain moments that come with a

you know X probability of happening that can cause that the evolution to stop and so it's like the you know in the history of the earth it's like the the development of you know the the asteroids hitting at different times and then the you know the tech plate tectonics and the you know the the the development

of oxygen in the atmosphere and all these things throughout. And then, you know, to tie that in, the theory is that at some point, you know, an advanced civilization reaches a point where it, you know, peters out for some reason. And that's why we've never seen them. There's just so many filters. And that's kind of the way I view prospects is that every year there's an X probability of every prospect hitting a wall or not developing or getting hurt or something happening. And when you're four years away from the majors or three years away from the majors, there's just more opportunities for things to go wrong. That being said, there are also more opportunities for things to go right. But there are fewer Fernando Tatis in the world than there are, you know, Estefan

Florials. The guy who looks like a prospect when he's 18 and then, you know, by the time he's 22, we're like, oh, no, not really. He might be a fourth outfielder. Yeah. And a lot of times the thing that goes right comes from the player you don't really see it coming from. Like, Ronald Ocuna was not a big international signing. Yeah. And then as he made his way up through the miners, it's like, wow, the Braves

really found somebody here. So, yeah, I'm just, I don't take big swings with prospects, just generally speaking. I like prospects. You know, my Dynasty League, my 2014 one that's referenced here a lot, it has a bigger emphasis on prospects.

It's one of those dynasty leagues that I think requires more of one than the league, Anthony Wigle's presenting here, because it's not just, it's not just, okay, prospects are you can have them for a long time and they have a chance to be really, really good, but they're also going to be very cheap to keep for a long time. And that's, that's really where prospects start to have more value. But even in that format, you know, whenever I've gone for the teenager who is supposed to be a really big deal maybe three or four years from now. It's almost always gone wrong.

It went right with Raphael Desmer's. That was one that panned out. But, you know, generally speaking, I've had more success going with the safer prospects and a lot of them have turned into studs. I think that makes sense. Here's a question I had. How are you handling last year's breakouts?

How much stock are you putting into the short season breakout for a dynasty player. Now, you have Shane Bieber number six overall. A lot of that is because he was the number one player in Roto scoring and fantasy last season per CBS fantasy's formula. But he was really good in 2019 as well. He was, yeah. He was drafted in, he was a second rounder going into 2020. So, yeah.

And so I'm more interested in, like, that makes sense. You know, like maybe he regresses some from being the best pitcher in fantasy, but in all likelihood he's still going to be very, very good. It's hard for you to, he probably won't miss. I think like Trevor Bauer is a really interesting one. And you have him 34th. 34th overall. Five present value.

He is 30. How much of that is skepticism about what he did in 2020? How much of that is age? How much of that is, you know, what have you? Well, both. It's both because I have him 34th here in dynasty rankings in my dynasty rankings. He is more like, I don't know, 15th, 16th in redraft rankings. So I'm giving him a pretty big downgrade for the long term format because both because I'm not totally sold on him being who he was last year and because he's clearly in the middle stages of his career, if not toward the tail end. So, you mentioned I gave him a five for present value. It's the high score, obviously. Give him a three for future value.

I give him a three for confidence. And I don't think anyone I rank ahead of him at 34 has lower than a three for confidence. So among the high-end players, he gets a lower confidence score for me. And it's because of skepticism. Like, it's easier when you're talking about a redraft scenario to trust in the breakthrough than it is in dynasty where you're maybe tied to this guy for years to come no matter what he turns into or you're denying yourself a chance to be tied to somebody else for several years because you invested in power so yeah that that skepticism does play into the dynasty rankings and

I think it should uh and then I think Kyle Tucker is really interesting number 31 overall um what what's funny is he basically has two small sample sizes in the majors uh like 25 games in 29, 22 games in 2019, 58 in 2020. He was basically the same player across both of those two samples, which, you know, to a certain extent, sort of makes it easier to buy into what he's done. And that's, you know, hit 268 across those 80 games with 13 homers, 13 stolen bases on 162 game sample, 27 steals, 27 homers,

only caught stealing three times. Manageable strikeout rate, not terrible plate discipline. How confident are you in him both in 2021 and then in the long term? Now, what's interesting about this is I'm actually, even though he's, so I have him ranked higher than Trevor Bauer here. I have him three spots ahead of Bauer. For 2021, I obviously want Bauer. Yes. And I might even say I'm more, not just that Bauer has the higher impact potential reigning Cy Young winner,

but I might actually be more confident in him for 2021, specifically, just because there is such a small sample there from Tucker. But Tucker has been a top prospect from the day he was drafted. He put it back-to-back seasons at AAA that were just amazing. Statistically, he's only 24 years old. I don't, based on what he's done now, the small samples in 2020 and even 2019,

I feel like he's going to be who he was projected to be. I don't know if there might be some growing pains along the way, but from a dynasty perspective, you're getting him at a very early stage of his career. You're getting somebody who, it looks like, it looks like it's going to be a big steel source, which certainly in five-by-five fleaks,

you want to lock those guys in whenever possible. So, yeah, that's an interesting comparison between those two. Tucker comes out a little head for me and Bauer in these dynasty rankings, but of course Bauer's the better bet. for 2021. And I think it's very interesting that Kyle Tucker is five spots ahead of Luis Robert. This time a year ago, Luis Robert probably would have been 20, 25 spots ahead, at least for most people. For most people.

You know, in redraft, it was like a hundred pick gap between the two of them. Well, we were on the same page, the two of us, that like, you know, we're not so sure Tucker's going to be any worse. than Louise Robert. He might be better. And he was. And he was good for us. Yeah. And then one other question I'll ask and then, or one other topic to broach, and then I'll let you get to some more of your notes is just, you know, some of those old guys. You know, how do you, how do you differentiate between, you know, I'm trying to think of like a Kenta Maeda, who's 33 years old versus is someone who actually here's a really interesting example kenta maeta 33 or louis severino 27 you know severino obviously coming back from the tom of john surgery um you have kenta myata two spot tire is that to me that seems like severino is a big win big lose kind of guy whereas

my ada seems like a more certain thing is that how you view it as well well um according to the scores I give them no, because I actually give them the same confidence rating of two on the one to five scale. Now, it's different reasons for that. Maeda just did something we've never seen him do before. We, including myself, were kind of hopeful that he could be something like he was this year. But, you know, small sample size for a guy who's... The concerns that we had about him would specifically not be answered by a 60 game season. Right.

Yeah, I think some of it was, can he be good in a starting role or as a real starter? I feel very confident he can be, and I felt very confident he could be before that. How will he handle 180 innings? That, I think, is the still remaining question. Yeah, that's part of it. Sure. So a part of it is just, Kinta Maeda is, I think my, is he 10th or do I have him 12th among starting pitchers? and just regular redraft rankings.

He's really high. Because given that there were some risks for really all the guys in that vicinity, it didn't seem appropriate for me to downgrade him behind like a Jack Flaherty, let's say after what Kinta Maeda just did. So I give him a five score for present value, him being 33, only a two for future value. And again, two for confidence. And Luis Severina, it's the same, it adds up to the same number.

he's two for present value because he's going to come back midseason maybe. And then five for future value because we all know he's top 10 potential when healthy. I have a lot of confidence in the Tommy John recovery, but still just a two for confidence because we got to actually see him come back. 27 years old. He's still in the prime of his career. I think it's hard to compare those to Maeda and Severino. It's how committed are you to winning in 2021 is a big part of that.

And if you're not really at all, then of course it makes sense to take. Severeino instead. But Severino versus the other big pitchers coming back from Tommy John's surgery at some point in 2021, which are Chris Sale and Noah Cindergarde.

So I have Chris, so I have Severino at 79, two spots behind Maida. I have Sale at 130. Now he's 32 years old, so that kind of makes sense. But I have Cindergarde at 131. He's 28, only a year older than Severina. Yeah.

That is because I feel like they're kind of on different planes now in terms of upside. I mean, Cinderguards and numbers were really falling off, particularly the strikeouts leading up to his lost year. And I have left confidence in who he's going to be when he comes back that, you said, Reno. I mean, 131, that's still given the upside at a position of great demand, that's still a good value pick. I mean, I love, and Dynasty restart, Dynasty Startup leagues, I love taking these guys coming off Tommy John's surgery because I just have so much confidence in the recovering.

People tend to overlook them. But of those three, I clearly have the most confidence in Severino. Yeah, I agree in, yeah, I agree with that just because he was, he was more reliable. He was better than those two guys. You know, in the immediate preceding. seasons. I think

Cindergard versus Gonsalind is really interesting. You know, I don't think we need to get too far into that, but Gonsland's only a year younger. Yeah. So I have Gonsolent four spots ahead of Cindergarde. Yeah. Sorry, I should have said that. Yeah. It is interesting. A 46 and two-thirds innings last season. He does have, you know, a 260 ERA in 86 and two-thirds, mostly as a starter for the Dodgers.

So it's a combination of I really like Gonselin. I've kind of soured on Cindergarde. And, you know, how committed are you to 2021? Again, because Gonsalind is going to be a contributor in 2021. Cindergarde, if maybe, I'm not counting on much from him in 2021. So if you're completely punting on 2021, I think it makes sense to take Cindergard ahead. But if not, it's pretty close as I have it. We do need to take a break.

and then we're going to get into more of these major leaguers, interesting major leaguers from a dynasty perspective. You're listening to Fantasy Baseball today. Welcome back. Scott White and Chris Towers here, Fantasy Baseball today. We're talking to you about Dynasty leagues. Chris's cat is walking across. If you're watching, this is a good reason to subscribe to the YouTube channel.

YouTube.com slash Fantasy Baseball today because... Just a tail waving in his face. Multiple cats have crossed. as soon as I start talking, as soon as I see the camera light go on, they're just, it's time to move about. Fortunately, we didn't see the back end of that cat because that would not have been a view anybody appreciated. We're looking at my top 150 for Dynasty League's here, and we've talked a little about the guys coming back from Tommy John surgery. Three young guys who were really excited about in Dynasty leagues at this time a year ago, and they just did. didn't live up to the hype.

Jordan Alvarez, Kestin Hira, Vladimir Guerrero. They're all younger than 25. They still check in at 39, 40, and 41 in my dynasty rankings. So to put that in perspective, 38 is Pete Alonzo, who kind of disappointed themselves.

Luis Robert is 36, and then behind that group is like DJ LaMahue and Tim Anderson. Do you think that's appropriate for Jordan Alvarez, Kestin Hiro, Vladimir Guerrero? could be a little bit high for here and Guerrero, just because what went wrong for them in 2020

was that they just didn't play well, and they kind of have what looked like if they don't improve upon them kind of glaring issues. You know, here it's the contact issue. You know, he just swings and misses way too much. And Guerrero, it's just that he just, I mean, frankly, he just doesn't hit the ball that well. You know, he makes okay contact.

He's still right about a league average strikeout rate, but it's just a lot of ground balls and not that much authority. And so I guess it's in a way giving Alvarez a little extra credit on those guys because he didn't get the chance to disappoint us last season. Coming off surgery on both knees, I think. Yeah, and he's 23 years old and seems to have kind of degenerative. issues in his knees, not what you want. Yeah, I, you know, I'm kind of relieved he had surgery.

I feel better about investing in him with a correction applied versus we don't know what's going on. So that makes me feel more confident in drafting him. But I guess my point here with these three is like, I don't think whatever happened to 2020. This gets into how much are you weighing 2020 stats in general, particularly for high upside guys that we were this excited about. 60 games ago, you know.

Yeah, you don't want to abandon those. And nobody seems to be abandoning Guerrero specifically, Hero to a lesser extent. Alvarez is the one who can slip. Alvarez can slip quite a way, which is interesting because he's the most proven by far. He was basically a first-round caliber bat, 2019. DH only, but whatever.

Kind of along that same lines, Glaber Torres, who had two, well, a year and a half that were really good, and he's only 24 years old. He tends to slip a lot in redraft leagues, Glaver Torres. He's shortstop only right now,

at least on CBS, no longer second base eligible. I still have him at 42 here, just because the future for him at age 24 is so bright. Played 42 games last season. Yeah, and that's one of those things where it's like, if a guy has 42 games where he has a 714 OPS, roughly, I think, is what he would have had or what he did have.

You don't even blink. If he plays 160 games where, you know, the other 118 are really good. I think it's probably fair to mostly overlook that with Glaber Torres. So Carlos Correa, who kind of in the same boat and bounced back at a big way in the playoffs. I think he had more than half his home runs in 2020 in the playoffs. he's a couple years older than Torres, but 26. And I have him at 59. I was getting some comments about him on Twitter.

Some people thought that was kind of high. Carl's Gray is a guy who has been a first rounder a couple times in his career. Like he's kind of where we were with Corey Seeger at this time last year. And you see how that turned out. Definitely somebody I'm still willing to invest in a dynasty leagues. Javier Baez, I kind of lump these three short stops together as guys everybody believed in. but they were just did not live up to expectations in the short 2020 season. He's already 28, so he's a little lower for me.

I have him at 73. But still, pretty good time to buy in again in Dynasty leagues, I feel like. Joe Adele is 84. That puts him just a little behind Julio Rodriguez, the 20-year-old Mariners outfield prospect. Joe Adele doesn't qualify as a prospect anymore. He was terrible. the little bit we saw him in the majors last year just striking out way too much

and you know that that tells you the extent to which his prospect status has slipped which is not really that much I mean 84th on this list just behind Julio Rodriguez if he did qualify as a project prospect Adele would probably be in my top 10

still and worth pointing out he won't even I mean we don't know when opening day will be but he probably won't be 22 by opening day turns 22 on April 8th he's one of those guys where if he hadn't played in 2020, probably 40 spots higher. And that's not to say he shouldn't be 84 because he did play in the major.

And he did strike out 55 times in 38 games. And that counts. But, you know, his value is hurt by the fact that he did play. Whereas some of the other, you know, a Julio Rodriguez, it's possible that he might have gotten to AA last year and had a 770 OPS. in which case he probably falls at least a little bit. And so that's the tough thing about this short and season is how much to take out of it,

how much to move certain guys down. I think 84 is reasonable for Joe Adel. I have him just ahead of a trio of high impact 34-year-olds. Carlos Carrasco, Jose Bray, Lance Lynn, obviously not much longevity from players like that, but they should be highly impactful at least for 2021. Randy Arrows Arena, who does technically qualify as a prospect and a rookie still. He checks in at 101 for me, which is about the same as where I have him in redraft,

so his prospect status isn't really doing him much good in my dynasty rankings. 0% chance you will draft him in either redraft or dynasty at 101. Redraft, I've seen him go about that late. Has the NFBC data shown otherwise? I admittedly haven't looked at it that closely. I just, I assumed he would have been much higher than that given, you know, I don't think I've seen a single person on fantasy Twitter express much.

57, yeah. Yeah. Overall, 58.78.74. NFBC ADP sells out really hard for upside. So I imagine he'll be lower on some of the other fantasy baseball services. You know, on that format because there is a lot of best ball formats there. And Randy Orozeraine is the kind of guy who if he does what he did last year to, you know, if he does 80% of what he did last season, you know, getting him at the 57th overall pick is going to be a steal.

It's big, he gets pushed down that far in these rankings and I think it's appropriate. Relative to other top 100 type players, just a very low confidence score, relatively speaking. And he's already 26, even though he's technically a. prospect. You know, he's already in the prime of his career, not pre-prime. Yon Moncada and Austin Meadows, both also 26, are just below Aeros Arena. It's interesting. Yeah.

Yeah. All right, we got a couple Twitter questions to address here, but I want to talk a little about the Mandalorian because I didn't get to yesterday. Actually, I... Let's do the Twitter questions first and close up to show us Amanda. All right, fine. We'll talk about DIN later. You can't have your din before your desserts.

Jeff Collier asks, what kind of package would it take for you to part with Wander Franco in a dynasty league? We kind of got into this already, how much we value Wander Franco. Now, what's interesting about this, we had Ian Kahn, the actor slash fantasy baseball analyst on at some point in December. And he was,

he showed me his dynasty rankings and he had prospects, generally speaking, a lot more prospects a lot higher than I do. But his reasoning was because that's what people want and like just for trade, but he drafts them that high just to have them to sell

off for piles of major leaguers. Yeah, I think how do you value Wander Franco and what would you trade him for are two different questions. Because how you value him moving forward for your team

is what you expect him to produce. And there's a wide range of possible outcomes. But when you're trading him, presumably your whole league knows that he's available. And presumably, their offers should cover a pretty wide range of outcomes. And there's going to be someone in your league who views Wander Franco.

This is true of every prospect in every league, especially the top ones. There is someone who is 100% convinced Wanderfranco is the next Ronald Acuna, Fernando Tatis, Mike Trout. And so you should get that kind of value for him. Yeah, you should get more than, at least more than one. Is it more than two? I don't know, but more than one major leaguer who you could expect to keep for a long time

himself and is already good and is established. And that's really the only way that it's going to be worth it. And even that depends on, you know, exactly how the keeper rules were. in your league, major leaguers versus minor leaguers league more like my 2014 Dynasty League that values prospects more. It should be more than two major leaguers that you're getting back. It should be more like three or four.

But one like the emailer whose name I'm forgetting, even though I mentioned it several times, where you don't get many major league spots to keep and they lose players move their minor league status fast, then you might have to settle for only two if you want to do that.

And maybe you don't. Jeff Watson has a trade. So I was just looking at your rangings and like Zander Boggards and Zach Gallen. Would you do that? Give up Wanderfranco to get those two guys? Yeah. In most dynasty leagues I would.

Sure. Do you think someone would offer you that? No. I don't, but maybe. It just depends. It depends. Do you think somebody would? I could see it.

I could see it in the right circumstance. Yeah. Like a rebuilder who, yeah, I could see it. Yeah. But Jeff, Watson wants to know how would you value prospects when looking to trade two for one or vice versa in dynasty leagues? So I think that I think the Ian Con logic applies here where if you're giving up a high end prospect, you should probably be on the two side of that deal.

And it's different from, you know, I talking redraft leagues a lot where in a trade, I normally want to be on the side getting the best player. You normally don't want to be on the two side. but it's it's the answer here is predicated on the belief that people overpay for prospects in dynasty leagues generally speaking so you know it depends on obviously who the two players are but if they're two really good established fairly young players that's probably more valuable than any prospect one thing i would add to that is um if you're trading multiple prospects you are increasing your risk because that is one thing that you know the chances of anyone prospect turning into a superstar are relatively low.

But if you're trading two top 20 prospects or three top 50 prospects, then that's when you really start have to get a step, really have to get a premium back because the chances of any one of those guys hitting in that way that makes them incredibly, incredibly valuable, it does go up. That's the way I view it. My thoughts on the Mandalorian are complicated. I wish I had recorded,

Chris Welsh ended up having and I ended up having this conversation. after we stopped recording. We should have just recorded it and presented it as like a bonus episode. I don't know. Because it was good stuff. And I have a feeling you and I are not going to be on the same page like he and I were.

I binged the Mandalorian during my time off. It's 16 episodes. Most are closer to half an hour than an hour. So very bingeable. I think the longest one is like 47 minutes or something. Yeah, yeah. Very bingeable.

And look, entertaining. Like, my stance on Star Wars in general is that they're all fine. They're all fine. None of them ascend to greatness. None of them are really that bad either. They're all entertaining enough to watch. Episode 9 was pretty boring.

Episode 9 is probably actually the low point for the series. But for the most part, all Star Wars is basically fine. And I don't really get the hype on either end. I mean, look, it's, it's, they're, is not a lot of moral ambiguity going on in any of these stories. There's not, there's not a lot of character development. I feel like, like, part of my issue with Star Wars is I never really care that much about anybody. I will just say this. It's unlikely that you will ever, I know you're, you're a father and you're a busy man, but if your son ever wants to watch some cartoons,

these Star Wars cartoons are actually really, really good. And I think they're the arguably the best part of the world. Are they better than the Mandalorian? Because I kind of haven't built to my point yet, which is that, having said that, I think the Mandalorian is the best Star Wars I've seen so far. Okay. It still suffers from a lot of what Star Wars suffers from in general, and that it's kind of a lot of action.

It relies heavily on action sequences, and it still doesn't make me care that much about the characters involved in those action sequences. Contrasting that to like the MCU, which did a great job at both, I feel like. Star Wars has always come up short there. And so my experience going through the Mandalorian for the first 14 of the 16 episodes

was basically, I'm not, it's pretty good. Does it live up to the hype? I don't know. Like I love the guest stars, Bill Burr showing up, you know,

Timothy Oliphant. showing up. John Carlo Esposito. Great, great guest stars. I love that. And, you know, some, some imaginative stuff as Star Wars is always, the thing Star Wars has always excelled at. Yeah. But then I got to the last two of 16 episodes and it didn't get me all the way in.

Okay. But it definitely was like, whoa, this is, this is better than it's ever been before. Maybe you just hate Grogu. I just like that's kind of the thing. Like why should I care about Grogu? Because he does adorable. Because he does cute things like eat the anthropomorphic frog ladies, babies.

He didn't know any better. Yeah. No, hold on. That is on din for not feeding him. You have a child. Feed your child, din. I mean, he had to steal macaroons from some small,

child in the desert just to survive. Kind of the problem with Star Wars too is that there's an anthropomorphic frog lady. Like you can't, you can't get any more inventive with your species than that. Do you watch it with subtitles? Yeah, I did. It was like, like frog lady, frog lady makes frog noises or something was the subtitle. I loved it. It was delightful.

I think all of that makes perfect sense. and I was more on the I like the Star Wars world more than the actual Star Wars like I like the universe more than the actual stories until I watch Clone Wars and Rebels I think those do a The cartoon series The first the two there's a third one that's not I haven't watched it but I've heard it's not as good but Clone Wars and Rebels excellent character building,

excellent world building, a ton of stuff in there with like, hey, we're going to, it's all like, Adventure of the Week, kind of like Mandalorian, where it's like,

here, we're in a new place this week. And here's some new people. And you're going to see, like, here's how the planet Mandalor works. And, uh,

it really adds a ton of stuff to it. And it makes like, clone wars makes Anakin Skywalker in the, the prequel trilogy, a lot better of a character. which is not an endorsement of the prequel trilogies. Because if you have to watch seven seasons of a cartoon for a three movie series to be good, that's probably not a good three movie series.

But I think those are excellent. It's like really, the best thing I can say about Mandalorian is it like, it made me feel the way I felt watching Star Wars as a kid. Yeah. Like it reignited that wonder in me. And then I went and watched Clone Wars and then I went and watched Rebels. And those like,

I'm all in now. I got, I got like the video games. I've been all in. This is my, 2020 was my Star Wars year. Yeah. No,

you've, you've always been a big Star Wars, at least as long as I've known, you've been a big Star Wars nerd. And I've just been kind of the guy like, eh, it's fine. Mandalorian's a little better than fine.

I will give it that. It's a little better than fine. I think Bill Burr's my favorite part of it. Anyway, that's, that's all we have time for. We went too long again. We will be back with you later this week, I believe, Thursday morning.

We'll be back with you, Chris and I. Until then, bye-bye.